Learn • Explore • Create

Scratchy Turtles

Those of you who grew up in the 80s and early 90s probably remember Logo, an educational programming language that used a “turtle” to draw. Users would use simple commands to move the “turtle” around the screen and the PENUP and PENDOWN commands allowed users to draw as the “turtle” moved.

The Scratch programming language of today is an evolution of Logo, but in the past thirty years computers have evolved too. Kids of today are more likely to code a multi-level platformer than code an arrow to draw as it moves across the screen. Thus, Scratch’s powerful pen tool is often overlooked.

This week Girl Powered Coders were introduced to the power of the pen! Students were challenged to create a drawing app that allows users to change the pen colour.

Naomi uses Scratch a lot at home, but she had never used the pen coding blocks before. “I really liked using the pen tool. I’m still working on pen colour.”

Adam “felt really good with making the colour change to pink, but now I’m trying to change it back to green.”